Monday, January 12, 2009 - 01:36 PM

To the chagrin, I believe, of my wonderful spouse, I fixed the orange chair upstairs. It is possibly the most-hideous chair I have ever seen, and I think she had hopes that its formerly imminent physical failure would provide cause to remove it from the house. She did not, however, count on my (1) reluctance to throw out something that could still be salvaged or (2) my resourcefulness.

The chair was saved with a combination of the power drill, some old twinish rope, and an old roped bed pattern from the first Foxfire book. Something like the pattern I used is here, although I went through the top, not through the sides.

I drilled holes from top to bottom through the seat of the chair (the "frame") and tied a knot in the rope. I strung it through the first hole from the bottom, and tied a knot in the tailing end to keep all of it from coming though the hole.

I pulled the rope across the chair and went through the top of the hole across from the first, pushing the rope downwards. Staying on the same side but going over a hole to the left, I came out the top and went straight across to the hole next to the one I started with. When I finished step 1, I had straight rope lines going across the chair, front to back. I tied off the rope with another knot after finishing.

I started on the "side" of the chair next, going across to the other side, working the same way as before, only weaving the rope through the existing work done in step one. This created a woven rope seat for the chair, with squares about 3 inches to a side. I put the cushion on top, et voila! The chair is sound and firm again. It will survive to annoy Mac for at least another 30 years. It is also quite comfortable now.

Monday, January 12, 2009 - 01:23 PM

I think I created a DIY Centralia yesterday. I stuffed the fireplace insert with some of our firewood, carefully stacking it inside the insert so as to take up nearly all available space. This was done atop a hot bed of coals. It ran from 3:15 pm or so until about 10:00 pm without needing a refill. After going outside at one point to make sure I didn't set the chimney on fire or anything (it resulted in a fair amount of steam initially, as our "seasoned" firewood isn't), I was reminded of nothing so much as Centralia, what with the smoke and the endless fire. Unlike Centralia, however, I viewed all of the above as a positive experience.

Monday, November 10, 2008 - 03:00 AM

The vermicomposting is going swimmingly. The primary problem I have encountered is that there is a lot of moisture in the compost. The vegetable matter that gets dumped into the bucket is fairly wet, and the set up I have right now does not "breathe" as well as I would like. I may try to add some holes. Alternatively, I might look for a muffin fan to run to aerate the bins fro time to time.

Saturday, November 08, 2008 - 01:24 AM

Age has surely caught up with me.

Ah...I've got it back. I just brought home an older computer from work. It has been wirelessed and attached to our home lan. All sorts of work-related, but unnecessary to home stuff has been removed. It runs like new again. Woohoo!

In any case, I'm adding bookmarks. One of which is a certain relative's blog. Not knowing the URL, I search for "[handle] martian [xxxx] poison." Bingo. First result. That's just money.

Friday, November 07, 2008 - 10:50 AM

The hydroponic experiment is moving right along. Radishes are more or less ready for harvesting. I may pull a couple for salads this weekend. "Salads" meaning that both the greens and the root will be eaten, mixed with some other stuff. I may pull some dandelion greens from the yard to go with them. Too bad Stacey's out of town...I bet she'd be thrilled to try it out.